Heretofore, servers generally, and multi-node network servers in particular, have paid little if any attention to power or energy conservation. Such servers were designed and constructed to run at or near maximum levels so as to serve data or other content as fast as possible, or where service demands were less than capacity to remain ever vigilant to provide fast response to service requests. Increasing processor and memory speeds have typically been accompanied by higher processor core voltages to support the faster device switching times, and faster hard disk drives have typically lead to faster and more energy-hungry disk drive motors. Larger memories and caches have also lead to increased power consumption even for small single-node servers. Power conservation efforts have historically focused on the portable battery-powered notebook market where battery life is an important marketing and use characteristic. However, in the server area, little attention has been given to saving power, such servers usually not adopting or utilizing even the power conserving suspend, sleep, or hibernation states that are available with some Microsoft 95/98/2000, Linux, Unix, or other operating system based computers, personal computers, PDAs, or information appliances.
Multi-node servers present a particular energy consumption problem as they have conventionally be architected as a collection of large power hungry boxes interconnected by external interconnect cables. Little attention has been placed on the size or form factor of such network architectures, the expansability of such networks, or on the problems associated with large network configurations. Such conventional networks have also by-and-large paid little attention to the large amounts of electrical power consumed by such configurations or in the savings possible. This has been due in part because of the rapid and unexpected expansion in the Internet and in servers connected with and serving to Internet clients. Internet service companies and entrepreneurs have been more interested in a short time to market and profit than on the effect on electrical power consumption and electrical power utilities; however, continuing design and operation without due regard to power consumption in this manner is problematic.
Networks servers have also by-and-large neglected to factor into the economics of running a network server system the physical plant cost associated with large rack mounted equipment carrying perhaps one network node per chassis. These physical plant and real estate costs also contribute to large operating costs.
In the past, more attention was given to the purchase price of equipment and little attention to the operating costs. It would be apparent to those making the calculation that operating costs may far exceed initial equipment purchase price, yet little attention has been paid to this fact. More recently, the power available in the California electrical market has been at crisis levels with available power reserves dropping below a few percent reserve and rolling blackouts occurring as electrical power requirements drop below available electrical power generation capacity. High technology companies in the heart of Silicon Valley cannot get enough electrical power to make or operate product, and server farms which consume vast quantities of electrical energy for the servers and for cooling equipment and facilities in which they are housed, have stated that they may relocated to areas with stable supplies of low-cost electricity.
Even were server manufactures motivated to adopt available power management techniques, such techniques represent only a partial solution. Conventional computer system power management tends to focus on power managing a single CPU, such as by monitoring certain restricted aspects of the single CPU operation and making a decision that the CPU should be run faster to provide greater performance or more slowly to reduce power consumption.
Heretofore, computer systems generally, and server systems having a plurality of servers where each server includes at least one processor or central processing unit (CPU) in particular have not been power managed to maintain performance and reduce power consumption. Even where a server system having more than one server component and CPU may possibly have utilized a conventional personal computer architecture that provided some measure of localized power management separately within each CPU, no global power management architecture or methods have conventionally been applied to power manage the set of servers and CPUs as a single entity.
The common practice of over-provisioning a server system so as to be able to meet peak demands has meant that during long periods of time, individual servers are consuming power and yet doing no useful work, or several servers are performing some tasks that could be performed by a single server at a fraction of the power consumption.
Operating a plurality of servers, including their CPU, hard disk drive, power supply, cooling fans, and any other circuits or peripherals that are associated with the server, at such minimal loading also unnecessarily shortens their service life. However, conventional server systems do not consider the longevity of their components. To the extent that certain of the CPUs, hard disk drives, power supplies, and cooling fans may be operated at lower power levels or for mechanical systems (hard disk drive and cooling fans in particular) their effective service life may be extended.
Therefore there remains a need for a network architecture and network operating method that provides large capacity and multiple network nodes or servers in a small physical footprint and that is power conservative relative to server performance and power consumed by the server, as well as power conservative from the standpoint of power for server facility air conditioning. These and other problems are solved by the inventive system, apparatus and method. There also remains a need for server farms that are power managed in an organized global manner so that performance is maintained while reducing power consumption. There also remains a need to extend the effective lifetime of computer system components and servers so that the total cost of ownership is reduced.